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THE 

HOMING INSTINCT 



By 
FRED CLARE BALDWIN 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



3 M 2 I 
325" 



Copyright, 1913, by 
FRED CLARE BALDWIN 



©CI.A3 3 2 67 7 



DEDICATION 



THIS BOOKLET IS DEDICATED BY ITS 
AUTHOR TO THOSE CHURCHES AND 
CONGREGATIONS WHOSE KINDNESS 
AND PATIENCE THROUGH A PERIOD 
OF TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS HAVE 
HELPED HIM TO BELIEVE IN THE 
GOODNESS OF GOD BECAUSE OF THE 
BEAUTY OF HUMAN FRIENDSHIP. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword 7 

Immortality: The Homeward Instinct of 
the Human Soul 9 

Immortality as Reflected from the Old 
Testament Scriptures 25 

Immortality as Assured in the New 
Testament Scriptures 39 

Foretastes of Immortality 53 



FOREWORD 

The following essays on immor- 
tality do not assume to approach 
the question from the standpoint of 
pure logic, or in the spirit of sci- 
entific research; but it is hoped that 
they may not prove to be illogical, 
or essentially unscientific. One of 
the most hopeful signs of the times 
is the fact that as religion is becom- 
ing more practically religious, so is 
science becoming more thoroughly 
scientific. And the latter is nowhere 
so well evidenced as in the fairer 
treatment that is being rendered the 
religious element of human nature. 
We no longer account for the reli- 
gious phenomena of mankind by the 
assumption of a ghost story intro- 
duced early in the history of the 



8 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

race. The puerility of such an 
explanation, let us thank heaven, 
has at last become apparent. The 
tendencies of human nature that 
have been with it from the beginning, 
that have stayed with it through 
the centuries, that have never left 
it for however brief a period, that 
appear and reappear through all the 
stages of human progress — these 
tendencies have at last come to be 
regarded not only as indestructible 
but as highly indicative: they must 
be reckoned with on a serious basis. 
These essays are an humble effort to 
show with what force the instinct 
of immortality asserts itself in human 
life; and to reveal the worth of 
that fact as an evidence for immor- 
tality itself. The reader himself 
must be the judge as to the merits 
of the attempt. 



IMMORTALITY: THE HOME- 
WARD INSTINCT OF THE 
HUMAN SOUL 

The instinct of life is the strongest 
and most persistent of all concern- 
ing which we have any knowledge. 
Everything that lives clings to life 
with an eloquent tenacity. In the 
so-called vegetable kingdom such a 
thing as suicide is unknown; and 
there seems to be absolutely no in- 
stance of indifference to existence. 
Every grass-blade in the meadow; 
every patch of lichen or moss cling- 
ing to tree-trunk or bowlder; every 
flowering shrub manufacturing new 
root-stock in the darker laboratory 
of the soil while in the upper air 
it works out its miracle of fragrance 
and beauty; every old oak ramifying 



10 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

the earth with his hungry roots and 
expanding his clamorous leaves to 
the vitalizing sunlight; every green 
cedar clinging to the frowning face 
of some tall cliff and wrestling there, 
at so great disadvantage, with the 
heartless winds — everything that de- 
rives its sustenance from the soil 
seems bound to live while life is 
possible — and not merely while its 
environment is favorable or agree- 
able! Perhaps this is the thought 
that rings and reSchoes in the closing 
couplets of the one poem which 
marks the fame of our great novelist: 

Creeping where no life is seen, 
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green. 

Creeping where grim death has been, 
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green. 

Creeping on, where time has been, 
A rare old plant is the Ivy Green. 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 11 

The importance of these illustra- 
tions from the realm of vegetable 
life is not to be overlooked by the 
eager inquirer after truth. Most of 
us may not affect to despise that 
before which so great a thinker as 
Alfred Tennyson stood with uncov- 
ered head and uplifted hope: 

Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies: 

Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower — but if I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

If in the animal world, as we 
commonly apply the phrase, this in- 
stinct operates less blindly, it also 
acts more powerfully. There is not 
a living, moving creature but that 
apprehends what we call death and 
recoils from its approach. It is this 
that accounts for the struggle of 



12 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

the captured fish, and, cruel as it 
may seem, for the pleasure of the 
fisherman. It is this that accounts 
for the furious flutterings of the 
caged bird when some strange hand 
has invaded his prison-home; for the 
sensational alarm of the barnyard 
brood when a hawk is seen circling 
with such apparent innocence in the 
distant sky; for the swift dartings 
of the rabbit, the meteoric flight of 
the fox, the fierce and haunted look 
in the eyes of a stag at bay: every- 
thing that breathes loves its life 
and defends it to the last. We 
cannot make too much of this great 
though familiar fact of nature. It 
has a definite bearing upon the doc- 
trine of immortality. Its message 
to us is this: life is persistent; life 
abhors death. 

Now, the human mind is so 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 13 

clouded with the conceit of reason 
that it fails to recognize in any 
such measure as it should the sway 
of instinct within its own self. There 
is the same instinctive clinging to 
life and the same recoil from death 
in man that we find in the lower 
orders of being. The automatic clos- 
ing of the eyelids when the visual 
organ is threatened from without, 
the spontaneous uplifting of the hand 
to ward off an impending blow, the 
suddenly increased beating of the 
heart in face of any special danger 
or alarm — these and a score of kin- 
dred impulses have their origin in 
that same instinct of life we have 
been tracing. 

It is the instinct of life in man that 
impels human reason to the discovery 
and adoption of such modes and 
principles of action as tend toward 



14 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

the safe-guarding and promotion of 
the race itself. It is the same in- 
stinct that has stirred the scientific 
sense of man to that relentless pur- 
suit of all life's lurking foes which 
so conspicuously marks the age to 
which we belong. 

But in what measure man is 
greater and nobler than all other 
earthly creatures with which he is 
associated in the fellowship of life, 
in that measure also does the in- 
stinct of life in him take on a nobler 
and grander expression; until it be- 
comes what may truly be called the 
instinct of immortality. The longer 
we live, the longer we desire to 
live. This may appear to be a trite 
remark, but it is worthy of our 
profoundest attention. It embodies 
a fact surcharged with the mag- 
netism of a future life. If it is a 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 15 

good thing to have lived sixty, eighty, 
one hundred years, the soul of man 
insists upon the wisdom of going on 
past these swiftly overtaken mile- 
stones, and, looking forward, dis- 
cerns no point or place where it 
shall become willing to surrender 
existence. It is not the hope of 
immortality we are now discussing, 
but the instinct of life, with its last 
beautiful petal thrown out toward 
— what? Is the human soul less 
sure of itself than the flower of 
the field? On this last petal is 
there no light of day to dawn? 
Nay, we must show ourselves to 
be better botanists than that: could 
this unfolding flower of the hu- 
man soul have turned toward aught 
but the actual dawning of an actual 
day? 

In his best moods man assumes — 



16 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

simply and sublimely assumes — that 
he is to live forever. The normal 
old gentleman of eighty will plant 
an oak on his lawn and forget to 
have one depressing thought. He 
links himself to the future; he does 
not see death. The splendid manner 
in which the true historian appro- 
priates to himself all the past, and 
the true poet assumes ownership over 
all the future, is as refreshing as it 
is instructive. History and poetry 
are monumental expressions of an 
instinct in man that recoils from 
extinction. And in his best moods, 
we repeat, man does not regard 
himself as an ephemeral creature, 
but as one who in some deep and 
permanent sense is identified with 
all time and all eternity. This is 
the kind of being man is; and the 
question becomes, How came he to 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 17 

be this kind of being? And what 
does the fact signify? 

'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 
'Tis Heaven itself that points out an 

hereafter, 
And intimates eternity to man. 

Thus answers Addison. 

Not in entire f orgetf ulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 

From God, who is our home. 

It is to be regretted that Wordsworth 
could not keep to this clear strain 
throughout the stanza of which the 
above is a part. What he termed 
the philosophic mind was a little too 
formidable for him. He should have 
continued to trust the deep intuitions 
out of which arose youth's vision 
splendid. Tennyson, on the other 
hand, while not less philosophic, re- 
mained true to instinct: 



18 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

Sunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 

When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too deep for sound or foam, 
When that which drew from out the bound- 
less deep 

Turns again home. 

Shall we say, then, that man in- 
stinctively knows himself to be im- 
mortal? Yes, for that is what he 
does invariably assume to be the 
truth of the matter when he is not 
thinking too intently or too specifi- 
cally upon the subject. The reason- 
ing faculty, when in too severe action, 
inhibits the instinctive processes of 
the mind. And with metaphysics 
one can introduce chaos anywhere. 
But metaphysics has had little to 
do with most of the things that tend 
to make human life richer and hap- 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 19 

pier. Civilization is the outgrowth 
of the social instinct in man; it did 
not wait for the sanction of meta- 
physics. The home is the out- 
growth of an instinct calling for a 
much narrower sphere in which to 
reveal its splendors; but home-life at 
its best does not depend upon meta- 
physics. The instinct of immortality 
— to what shall we point as its out- 
growth? To the end of time it 
will continue to line the hill-crests 
of life with castellated dreams of 
heaven, and to lure the lagging feet 
of reason along its ascending path. 

How often do we hear it said: 
"Immortality? Heaven? O, these 
are but a mirage of the soul with 
its longings!" And what a shallow 
explanation is this, or, rather, what 
a splendid illustration from a shal- 
low mood of the cynic! We know, 



20 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

fortunately, the mechanism of the 
mirage. It is a process of light- 
bending whereby are lifted into view 
objects which would otherwise have 
remained hidden behind the horizon 
ofttimes by many miles. The shal- 
lowness of the cynic's remark reveals 
itself in his assumption that the 
mirage is essentially a delusion. The 
superb fact, on the contrary, is this, 
that a real ship below the horizon 
answers to the pictured vessel in the 
sky. Yes, heaven and immortality 
are indeed a mirage. To their beau- 
tiful vision, crowning forever the 
mists of earthly care and sorrow, 
there is something real and substan- 
tial answering. The homeward in- 
stinct of the human soul did not 
create this vision, although it does 
sustain a most vital relation to the 
recognition of the latter's worth. 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 21 

But the instinct of immortality 
does not assert itself with equal 
force and clearness in all men — and 
why? 

First, because some are not so 
willing as others to recognize its 
presence. There is a type of mind 
which will not trust a single in- 
stinct or intuition or emotion of the 
soul on the side of its larger and 
nobler activity. This is the type 
of mind that believes its doubts and 
doubts its beliefs; that enthrones 
reason, and tears down every beau- 
tiful thing in the soul in order that 
it may build this throne. Then 
reason turns autocrat with a venge- 
ance; and there is no one so unrea- 
sonable as Reason, the autocrat. 

Secondly, because some are not so 
wise as others to seek that atmos- 
phere of life, and more especially 



22 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

that altitude, which will best serve 
to arouse and develop this instinct. 
The waterfowl, from whose great 
flight Bryant drew such profound 
lessons of faith, was in the upper 
air; its silently moving form was 
limned against the blue depths of 
heaven. And he would surpass Bry- 
ant in fame who might explain to 
us how the carrier-pigeon performs 
her wonderful feat. All we know 
about it is that when she has been 
liberated from her temporary prison 
— one hundred, two hundred, one 
thousand miles away from her home 
— she first makes a more or less 
spiral flight toward heaven, and then, 
among the mysteries of the upper 
air, strikes a sure path homeward! 
They tell us, to be sure, that this 
homing instinct is strongest and 
surest when a nestf ul of wee pigeons 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 23 

at the end of those one thousand 
miles are crying and clamoring for 
the warm touch of their mother's 
breast. But this is no explanation. 
It is the same as saying that the 
instinct homeward is strongest when 
it has the holiest reasons for its 
assertion. 

So, the groveling must not be sur- 
prised if he fails to find the home- 
ward, heavenward instinct surging in 
his soul. The visions of life are on 
the hilltops; and man was made, both 
physically and spiritually, for the 
upward look. The normal tenden- 
cies of the human soul are all and 
always upward. This is why man 
is forever praying, forever clinging 
to the unseen, forever groping toward 
God and a goal of destiny other 
than the grave. Only in the upper 
vistas of thought and action will one 



24 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

find his heart attuned to sing with 
Anna Letitia Barbauld: 

Life! we've been long together, 

Through pleasant and through cloudy 

weather; 
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; 
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; 
Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time; 
Say not good-night, but in some brighter 
clime 

Bid me good-morning. 



IMMORTALITY AS REFLECT- 
ED FROM THE OLD TES- 
TAMENT SCRIPTURES 

We have seen that the instinct of 
life is universal, and that in man 
it takes on increased dignity and 
becomes the instinct of immortality. 
We have seen also that for the 
fuller recognition and development 
of this instinct it is incumbent on 
man to seek the right atmosphere 
and altitude. 

To man, clinging to life and re- 
coiling from death, clamoring for 
immortality and shuddering at the 
thought of extinction — to man so 
constituted comes that great oracle 
of truth, the Bible. The general 
attitude of the Holy Scriptures to- 
ward the doctrine of immortality is 

25 



26 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

that of economy so far as the dis- 
closure of details is concerned, but 
of most abundant generosity in its 
assurance of the fundamental fact 
itself. There is a world of sugges- 
tion in that utterance of our Lord, 
"If it were not so, I would have 
told you." In these words he taught 
us to value that fine form of evidence 
which every man may discover in 
his own breast, that upwardly reach- 
ing instinct, that eternal clinging to 
life and existence which we have 
been tracing. His strong and tender 
words that follow in the fourteenth 
chapter of Saint John are as a trellis 
let down from heaven to the clasp- 
ing vine of the heart's own death- 
less hope. 

The economy of the divine Word 
in its treatment of immortality is 
not without an explanation that will 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 27 

appeal to the thoughtful. The em- 
phasis of all biblical instruction and 
exhortation is placed upon human 
life in the totality of its need; upon 
the quality of life to be lived here, 
now, hereafter, forever! The Bible 
assumes that before a man begins 
even to inquire into the probability 
of a future life it were better for 
him to ascertain whether in any 
true and proper sense he is living 
at all. And with life once properly 
conceived and measurably realized, 
the only remaining need is a positive 
assurance of its unbroken contin- 
uance. There are, indeed, many 
things we desire to know, which in 
the fullness of time we shall know; 
but the Bible confines itself almost 
exclusively to what we need to know. 
The great cathedral window with its 
marvelous refractions was not placed 



28 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

where it is to lead the curious gaze 
of the worshiper into outlying fields 
of landscape and light; its purpose 
and mission are, rather, to let the 
light of an outer world fall in soft- 
ened splendor upon the bowed head 
or uplifted face of the worshiper 
himself. The doctrine of immortal- 
ity as presented in the Holy Scrip- 
tures is like that window: through 
its chromatic blendings all real and 
earnest life is enriched with a fullness 
of light from the land of its goal. 

And here, again, the matter of 
one's personal attitude claims our 
consideration. There is a sense in 
which every reader makes his own 
Bible. If one brings to its rare 
pages the spirit of criticism only, he 
will find much with which to feed 
the spirit of criticism; for, it is a 
divine book embodying a large meas- 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 29 

ure of the human element. If one 

brings to it his intellectual wants 

rather than his spiritual needs, he is 

destined to go away disappointed. 

If, on the other hand, one comes to 

this oracle laden and bowed and 

humbled with a profound sense of 

his needs; if he brings to it a hungry 

heart and a willingness to be led 

in the way of life, he will issue 

forth from its every perusal with an 

increased faith and an intensified 

assurance. Aldrich has shown us 

how to study the Bible and all other 

books of life: 

To the sea-shell's spiral round 

'Tis your heart that brings the sound: 

The soft sea-murmurs that you hear 

Within, are captured from your ear. 

You do poets and their song 

A grievous wrong, 

If your own soul does not bring 

To their high imagining 

As much beauty as they sing. 



30 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

In the Old Testament Scriptures 
we have immortality assumed rather 
than asserted, reflected rather than 
revealed; and to one who reads with 
an open mind there can be no doubt 
as to this assumption and reflection. 
To illustrate: 

"And Enoch walked with God: 
and he was not; for God took him" 
(Gen. 5. 24). Can we for one mo- 
ment concede or conceive that the 
Jews understood these words to mean 
that Enoch had suffered annihilation? 
If so, what was there in his annihila- 
tion that, to their minds, made it 
a specially fitting reward for con- 
spicuous piety? Was not their men- 
tal picture, rather, the more inspir- 
ing one — that the patriarch had gone 
out from the scenes of his earthly 
labors leaning, as it were, on the 
arm of God with whom he was to 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 31 

enjoy the closest communion hence- 
forth and forever? There can be but 
one answer to this question. 

"And Abraham gave up the ghost, 
and died in a good old age, an old 
man, and full of years; and he was 
gathered to his people" (Gen. 25. 8). 
Now, can we assume that the people 
of the old dispensation understood 
that the gathering place here re- 
ferred to was nothing more nor less 
than oblivion? Oblivion, we submit, 
would constitute a most vague and 
unsatisfactory gathering place. One 
cannot well conceive the marshaling 
of annihilated spirits on the plain of 
oblivion! The Jewish mind was 
peculiarly fond of tangibilities; but 
there is nothing more intangible than 
oblivion. No, the thought of our spir- 
itual ancestors was that the grand 
old man had indeed been ushered 



32 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

into the actual company of a con- 
genial host. 

If we take such a passage as 
Deut. 33. 27, "The eternal God is 
thy refuge, and underneath are the 
everlasting arms/ 5 and remove from 
it the background of immortality, 
what special comfort or encourage- 
ment or inspiration does it afford 
or suggest? Of what remarkable 
advantage are everlasting arms to 
a career limited by a few fleeting 
years? The devout and inquiring 
minds among the ancients were not 
so different from ours as that they 
could derive comfort and consola- 
tion from words without practical 
meaning. Everlasting arms, and 
everlasting lives leaning on these 
arms, are thought pictures that go 
naturally and necessarily together. 

King David seems to have drawn 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 33 

some actual comfort and solace from 
the meditation involved in those oft- 
repeated words, "I shall go to him, 
but he shall not return to me" 
(2 Sam. 12, 23). But how could 
that solace have been derived from 
any conception of things short of a 
future life? 

From the book of Psalms, that 
great hymnal of Israel — and of the 
Christian world, for that matter — 
we should expect to catch again and 
again the triumph-strains of immor- 
tality; nor does the expectation go 
unrewarded. What, for example, is 
to be thought of such an outburst 
as this? — "Therefore my heart is 
glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my 
flesh also shall rest in hope. For 
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; 
neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy 
One to see corruption." Do we get 



34 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

the underlying thought of this pas- 
sage? There is one thing that can- 
not perish, that a just and loving 
God will not permit to die — a right- 
eous life. It has no end! But 
listen to the sweet strain as it 
proceeds on its way: "Thou wilt 
shew me the path of life: in thy 
presence is fullness of joy; at thy 
right hand there are pleasures for- 
evermore" (Psa. 16. 9-11). It takes 
the light of eternity to account for 
the splendor that flashes from these 
words. 

Without entering into all the doc- 
trinal suggestions of the passage let 
us reflect upon these glowing words 
of the prophet Daniel, and ask our- 
selves what meaning would remain 
to them if the thought of immor- 
tality were removed from the vista 
which they create: "And many of 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 35 

them that sleep in the dust shall 
awake, some to everlasting life, and 
some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt. And they that be wise shall 
shine as the brightness of the firma- 
ment; and they that turn many to 
righteousness, as the stars forever 
and ever" (Dan, 12. 2, 3). 

And with what a beautiful and 
entrancing future-ward strain do the 
Old Testament Scriptures come to 
their close! The words of Malachi 
(3. 16-18) have been often and often 
quoted to sustain personal integrity 
in the midst of almost overwhelm- 
ing corruption; but as a tribute to 
immortality perhaps they have not 
been properly appreciated: "Then 
they that feared the Lord spake 
often one to another: and the Lord 
hearkened, and heard it, and a book 
of remembrance was written before 



36 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

him for them that feared the Lord, 
and that thought upon his name. 
And they shall be mine, saith the 
Lord of hosts, in that day when I 
make up my jewels." Verily, the 
divine coronation, according to this 
splendid piece of imagery, was a 
matter reserved for the future; and, 
verily, it was looked upon as an 
event in whose transcendent glory 
all the true and the faithful would 
be permitted to share! 

So much for the doctrine of im- 
mortality as reflected from the Old 
Testament Scriptures. Our review 
of the subject has been brief; but 
enough has been done, we trust, to 
reveal the wealth of what to some 
may be a new field of inquiry, for 
it is all too generally assumed that 
the Old Testament is silent upon 
the subject of immortality. We have 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 37 

seen that there is not an absolute 
silence as to direct teaching, and 
that what silence does prevail is not 
the silence of doubt or denial, but 
the silence of assent and assumption. 
They were men and women much 
like ourselves — those generations of 
old. They wondered at the mys- 
teries of existence just as we do; 
and seized, just as we do, upon 
whatever tangible evidence of the 
truth they were so fortunate as to 
find- They caught the vision — a 
percentage of them at least — that 
serious life cannot escape service. 
They groaned, as we do, when the 
burdens of life became excessively 
heavy; but, like ourselves, they went 
staggering on in the hard-beaten 
path. They answered to the call 
of courage amidst the carnage of 
strife. They sowed and reaped; they 



38 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

bought and sold; they married and 
were given in marriage; they enacted, 
again and again, the same drama of 
life as that in which we are engaged; 
they toiled and wept and laughed 
just about as we are doing, but 
with less to assure them; and they 
dreamed the indestructible dream of 
Immortality, 



IMMORTALITY AS ASSURED 

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 

SCRIPTURES 

Whoever in the spirit of reverent 
inquiry approaches the New Tes- 
tament Scriptures with a view to 
ascertaining their attitude toward 
immortality must become profoundly 
impressed with three outstanding 
facts: The peculiar positiveness of 
our Lord's utterances upon that sub- 
ject; the wonderful reality and near- 
ness of the unseen world to the 
minds and experiences of the dis- 
ciples after Pentecost; the unutter- 
able glory of every disclosure that 
was made to them of the celestial 
life. 

The self-assertions of Jesus of 
Nazareth, had they not been true, 

39 



40 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

were sufficient in themselves for the 
termination of his career without 
the violence of the cross. No other 
teacher has ever appeared among 
men who has dared to make such 
utterances as he made; none other 
has dared to clothe his utterances 
with so much of assumed authority: 
"I am the door of the sheep" (John 
10. 7). "I am the good shepherd" 
(John 10. 11). "I am the bread of 
life" (John 6. 35). "I am the true 
vine" (John 15. 1). "I am the way, 
the truth, and the life" (John 14. 6). 
"Before Abraham was, I am" (John 
8. 58). "I and my Father are one" 
(John 10. 30). Exclamation points 
are not sufficient for the punctua- 
tion of such utterances as these, and 
Christendom might well echo with 
songs of gratitude that there was one 
evangelist who felt the full weight 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 41 

of importance that attached itself to 
these sublime self-assertions of the 
Christ. 

Here was a Teacher who never 
speculated; who never philosophized; 
who never appealed either to the 
inductive or deductive processes of 
thought; who never said, "I think"; 
or, "It is my opinion"; or, "The 
weight of the evidence is on this 
side or that 55 ; but whose one and 
only mode of statement was, "I say 
unto you! 55 Here was a teacher who 
spake not as a student, or a scholar, 
or a philosopher, or a sage, but as 
one whose perspective of knowledge 
was above the mists that blind men's 
groping thought, and before whose 
vision the field of eternal truth 
stretched out its grandeur and glory. 
A detachment of the temple police 
was sent out one day to arrest this 



42 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

Teacher. Coming back to their su- 
periors empty-handed, the only apol- 
ogy or defense they could give was 
that "Never man spake like this 
man." Little did they dream that 
their terse and truthful reply would 
be echoed back through nineteen 
hundred years from every crucial 
circumstance to which human life is 
heir. If we search for the secret 
of that power in the presence of 
which the temple police were swerved 
from their purpose to arrest the 
Master, we find it not so much in 
the words he spake, and not so 
much in the authority with which 
he uttered them, as in a certain 
beautiful fitness between himself and 
his message. The man and his mes- 
sage were united in a unique oneness. 
And that is how the matter stands 
to-day. We call Jesus of Nazareth 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 43 

our Lord, not because of the miracles 
he wrought, nor the wisdom he man- 
ifested, but simply and supremely 
because we perceive that he is fit 
to be followed. He commands our 
worship and our obedience. 

If Jesus Christ is a man — 

And only a man — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to him, 

And to him will I cleave alway. 

If Jesus Christ is a God — 

And the only God — I swear 
I will follow him through heaven and hell, 

The earth, the sea, and the air! 

In which terse and telling lines our 
lamented Gilder has carried the con- 
fession of the temple police to its 
logical conclusion and voiced the 
honest feeling of an ever-increasing 
proportion of the human race. 

And it was this teacher who said: 
"In my Father's house are many 
mansions: if it were not so, I would 



44 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

have told you. I go to prepare a 
place for you. And if I go and 
prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, and receive you unto myself; 
that where I am, there ye may be 
also." From him also come those 
astounding self-assertions which cli- 
max in the words which for mastery 
over the hearts and hopes of men 
have no rivals to-day: "7 am the 
resurrection, and the life: he that be- 
lieveth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth 
and believeth in me shall never die!" 

The wonderful reality of the unseen 
world to the minds and experiences 
of the disciples after the day of 
Pentecost is one of the most en- 
trancing facts encountered by the 
New Testament student. Before the 
crucifixion, and as its shadows were 
deepening around the soul of Christ, 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 45 

"they all forsook him and fled." 
They had not sufficient insight and 
courage to sustain their loyalty to 
the visible presence of their Lord. 
In his disaster they saw the crum- 
bling of all their hopes — for all their 
hopes were centered in a material 
construction of his Messiahship. But 
after Pentecost what a change do 
we behold! Now, no threatening 
peril of persecution can swerve them 
from their loyalty to an invisible 
Lord. His triumphant presence fills 
the atmosphere of all their thinking. 
A new background has been given 
to life. A spiritual kingdom ab- 
sorbs their energies and sways their 
motives. And that kingdom they 
regard, not as a remote possibility, 
but as an immediate fact. They 
behold its glory and live in the 
radiance of its increasing splendor. 



46 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

They are citizens of two worlds; 
and through the mystic door of 
ecstasy they seem to be able almost 
at will to pass from the one to the 
other. And yet they are the sanest 
set of men to whom a colossal prac- 
tical enterprise was ever committed. 
So real and so near is the unseen 
world to these exalted founders of 
Christianity that they can laugh at 
martyrdom, and could dare to court 
its releasing tortures. It was heav- 
en's own light that played upon 
the countenance of Stephen as the 
vengeance of men was preparing to 
crush him. And he was not in the 
muttering dream of delirium when 
he cried out, "Behold, I see the 
heavens opened, and the Son of man 
standing on the right hand of God." 
Such were the men, and such 
were the sustaining facts embodied 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 47 

in the lives and experiences of the 
men who have taught the world 
to say, "For our light affliction, 
which is but for a moment, work- 
eth for us a far more exceeding and 
eternal weight of glory; while we 
look not at the things which are 
seen, but at the things which are 
not seen: for the things which are 
seen are temporal; but the things 
which are not seen are eternal/' 

The two master minds of the 
apostolic church were Paul and John. 
The former of these was a man of 
pronounced scholarly bent, and was 
possessed of that synthetic type of 
mind which makes the philosopher; 
the latter was a man of deep in- 
sight, and was withal a mystic. 
Both were men of unquestioned in- 
tellectual integrity — men to whom no 
appeal could equal that of the truth. 



48 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

And to both these men, from the 
promontory of their triumphant lives, 
was it given to gaze into heaven 
ere yet they were called to abandon 
the thorn -filled paths of earth. Their 
reports — for they were not so un- 
grateful as to hide their pleasures 
in the recesses of their own mem- 
ories — are with us, and it is our 
sure privilege and prerogative to turn 
as often as the need asserts itself 
from the turmoils and cares of life 
to their glowing perusal. "I knew 
a man in Christ above fourteen years 
ago, (whether in the body, I cannot 
tell; or whether out of the body, I 
cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an 
one caught up to the third heaven. 
And I knew such a man, (whether 
in the body, or out of the body, I 
cannot tell: God knoweth;) How 
that he was caught up into Para- 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 49 

dise, and heard unspeakable words, 
which it is not lawful for a. man 
to utter" (2 Cor. 12. 2-4). 

Paul was an orator of no mean 
ability. Few have equaled him in 
readiness, fullness, and facility of 
speech. He was a master in the 
art of expression. But here, if we 
may be forgiven the figure, he met 
his Waterloo. He does not mean 
to say that he heard or saw any- 
thing which it would be wrong to 
report. He simply says that what 
he heard transcends the power of 
human language to relate. For its 
representation there is no law of 
syntax or rhetoric or eloquence that 
is adequate. Very well, thou master 
marshaler of human speech, in thy 
confession of defeat our hungry souls 
find more to feed upon than all the 
gathered volumes of human philos- 



50 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

ophy could afford! Nothing that 
any man has ever said so deeply 
quickens the divine curiosity of hu- 
man hope as these few words of 
thine. 

John, the mystic, the man of in- 
sight, was not content to leave the 
alluring task unattempted; and par- 
adoxical as it may seem, we are 
glad he was not. And John was a 
poet. Whatever he touched was 
transfigured with beauty. No one 
would be content with the heaven 
which he pictured; yet no one would 
be content to have the picture with- 
drawn. All the precious stones 
known to the ancients went into 
the colossal foundation walls of his 
Holy City, the New Jerusalem. 
Pearls of unimagined size and splen- 
dor adorned its alluring gates. Its 
walls of jasper rose above the ra- 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 51 

diant mists of time, massive in 
their strength and resplendent with 
the glory of God. Its streets were 
paved with preciousness and re- 
flected the light that casts no shadow 
— the light of perfect love- And 
they were lined with trees whose 
leaves are for the healing of the 
nations, leaving a ravished world to 
wonder what holier purpose their 
fruit can be made to serve. The 
throne of God was there with a 
rainbow for its canopy. In heaven 
the absolute beauty of law will be 
revealed and recognized. And there 
was no night there, with its deepen- 
ing shadows, its vigils and its heart- 
aches; no night, no sorrow, no pain, 
no sin, no death! 

O scientist of the materialistic 
school, for what do you bid the 
world to turn from this picture? 



52 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

With what substitute do you pro- 
pose to save human hope and retain 
for human life its essential beauty? 
O philosopher of the pessimistic 
school, how long will life remain 
endurable when your depressing noc- 
turnes have replaced in the hearts 
of men these chromatic wonders of 
the painter of Patmos? 



FORETASTES OF IMMOR- 
TALITY 

The assertion has been made in 
these pages that with life once 
properly conceived and measurably 
realized our only remaining need is 
an assurance of its continuance. But 
while this is true, and while it is 
true also that the Scriptures are 
noticeably economical in their dis- 
closures of the details of the future 
life, it does not follow that we are 
without any knowledge on that sub- 
ject. 

There are two things we are in 
perpetual danger of forgetting: first, 
how large a field the present is for 
splendid action; second, how clear 
and strong is all earnest life as a 
lens through which to search the 

53 



54 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

future. Real life is immortality be- 
gun. "And this is eternal life," 
said our Lord in that great prayer 
which constitutes the seventeenth 
chapter of Saint John's Gospel, "that 
they might know thee the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
thou hast sent/' To know God as 
revealed in Jesus Christ; to have 
seen in that revelation the blended 
glory of divine justice and holiness 
and love; to have had one's spiritual 
sense so awakened as to be able 
to perceive and appreciate the beauty 
of the Christ-life; to have come into 
conscious fellowship with that life 
through a deliberate and persistent 
effort to make it one's own — this, 
saith the Scripture, is eternal life; 
this is immortality begun. And 
again: "Beloved, now are we the 
sons of God, and it doth not yet 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 55 

appear what we shall be: but we 
know that, when he shall appear, 
we shall be like him" (1 John 3. 2). 
Our fully restored likeness to God 
will be the crowning fact of our im- 
mortality. From that fact will be re- 
flected all the flashing glory that John 
strove so hard to reproduce in his 
fadeless picture of the jeweled foun- 
dations, the towering jasper walls, 
the gates of pearl, and the streets 
of gold. 

Well, then, what follows? The 
molding touch of the Christ-life 
upon ours, here and now, in the 
rough and rugged pathway we are 
pursuing — where our feet are oft- 
times bruised by stones and pierced 
with thorns; where the shadows of 
sorrow still darken the way, and the 
storm- voices about us are but slowly 
yielding up their discord; here, just 



56 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

here, the molding touch of the 
Christ-life upon our own is one of 
the foretastes of immortality. Was 
not this the theme of Paul's thought 
when he wrote thus to the Ephe- 
sians? — "But God, who is rich in 
mercy, for his great love wherewith 
he loved us, even when we were 
dead in sins, hath quickened us to- 
gether with Christ, . . . And hath 
raised us up together, and made us 
sit together in heavenly places in 
Christ Jesus." 

The molding touch of the Christ- 
life upon ours is not wholly a mystic 
process. It is a process with which 
we have something to do; and therein 
lies one of its profoundest joys. It 
is a process that has to do with the 
erection within our own selves and 
by our own hands of Christlike 
ideals. It is the joy of realizing 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 57 

within our own and very selves 
something of his immaculate good- 
ness; something of his justice, pur- 
ity, and patience; something of his 
essential kindness, gentleness, and 
love; something of his tender com- 
passion toward the unfortunate, the 
weak, the erring; something, in short, 
of his transcendent beauty of being 
— something of his transfiguration 
glory! Call it character-making if 
you please. And if heaven is the 
one and only adequate explanation 
of character, the coronation field 
toward which the blood-stained path 
of life leads on, the magnetic morn 
toward which the unfolding flowers 
of virtue are ever and instinctively 
turning — then this precious process 
we call character-making is nothing 
less than a foretaste of heaven. Its 
deep thrills of joy are one with that 



58 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

surging tide of joy which beats 
against the eternal throne. And 
it is withal the joy of awakening 
strength and unfolding power. 

But character-making is a mystic 
process, although not wholly so; 
and herein also lies one of its pro- 
foundest joys. "I am crucified with 
Christ," said Paul, "nevertheless I 
live; yet not I, but Christ liveth 
in me: and the life which I now live 
in the flesh I live by the faith of 
the Son of God, who loved me, and 
gave himself for me 55 (Gal. 2. 20). 
The mystical must remain, and will 
remain, as an essential factor to life 
and religion whatever becomes of the 
mythical. "The wind bloweth where 
it listeth," said our Lord to Nicode- 
mus, "and thou hearest the sound 
thereof, but canst not tell whence 
it cometh, and whither it goeth: so 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 59 

is every one that is born of the 
spirit" (John 3. 8). We have no 
plumb line save our sense of the 
mystical with which to fathom the 
depths of meaning that are hidden 
in these words. And there is joy 
in mystery when mystery is kind. 

The atmosphere of all sincere 
Christian worship is surcharged with 
the mystical, the miraculous, the 
divine. The dangers that beset this 
truth should not depreciate it to 
our view. There is no primary 
necessity that faith in any of us 
should turn into credulity and thence 
into fanaticism. Sages have wor- 
shiped without losing their reason 
before ever we were born; and not 
all the wisdom of this keen and 
critical age has forsaken the altars 
of God. There is, we repeat, the 
mystical, the miraculous, the divine, 



60 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

in all sincere worship. Its recog- 
nition is among our tokens of accept- 
ance with God; it is a tangible 
evidence of his revealing presence; 
it is one of the heralding currents 
of the welcoming warmth of the 
soul's eternal home — a subtle touch 
of that radiant morn in which we 
are so soon to have our next great 
awakening. Whoever Charlotte Elli- 
ott was, she has put the world 
deeply in her debt for the hymn 
which so sweetly voices the truth 
with which we have just been 
dealing: 

My God, is any hour so sweet, 

From blush of morn to evening star, 
As that which calls me to thy feet, 
The hour of prayer? 

Blest is that tranquil hour of morn, 

And blest that solemn hour of eve, 
When, on the wings of prayer upborne, 
The world I leave. 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 61 

Then is my strength by thee renewed; 

Then are my sins by thee forgiven; 
Then dost thou cheer my solitude 
With hopes of heaven. 

No words can tell what sweet relief 

Here for my every want I find; 
What strength for warfare, balm for grief, 
What peace of mind. 

Hushed is each doubt, gone every fear; 

My spirit seems in heaven to stay; 
And e'en the penitential tear 
Is wiped away. 

Lord, till I reach that blissful shore, 

No privilege so dear shall be, 
As thus my inmost soul to pour 
In prayer to thee. 

And why should we not include the 
joy of service as one of the fore- 
tastes of heaven and immortality? 
I suppose that in heaven we shall 
not be so superior to the angels as 
to despise their chief source of happi- 
ness. And this is what we read of 
them in Heb. 1. 14: "Are they not 
all ministering spirits, sent forth to 



62 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

minister for them who shall be heirs 
of salvation?' 5 But under the head 
of service we have something even 
more to the point than this: "I 
heard a voice from heaven saying 
unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead 
which die in the Lord from hence- 
forth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that 
they may rest from their labors; 
and their works do follow them" 
(Rev. 14. 13). And there seems to 
be nothing in the way of the trans- 
lation, "do follow along with them." 
Here is a beautiful distinction. The 
rest of heaven will not consist of 
a cessation from serviceable activity, 
but only from that excess of hard- 
ship so incident to service in this 
preparatory career. The service it- 
self, freed from all circumstances 
of suffering, will continue. Service, 
then, that divine process by which 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 63 

we lend ourselves to others and 
share with them our strength and 
our joy — service, and the angelic 
joy that goes with it— is a fore- 
taste of heaven. And this is a most 
fortunate matter; for of all the fields 
of opportunity that greet us here 
none is so constantly at hand and 
none so easy of access as the field 
of service. Is one ever happier 
than when engaged in the effort to 
make others as happy as himself? 
If so, it is only when he is seeking 
to render others even happier than 
himself. Human kindness is immor- 
tality in the bud. And the love 
from which that kindness flows — 
what is it but the very life of God 
in the soul of man making that 
kindness possible and real? 

One word more: "I am come/ 5 
said the Saviour, "that they might 



64 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

have life, and that they might have 
it more abundantly" (John 10. 10). 
There is a sense of the fullness of 
life that tells of immortality. It 
need not be a constant fact of con- 
sciousness to retain its evidential 
value. Indeed, it may be doubted 
if anyone could keep it in con- 
stant possession. And this is a 
commendable fact, for life owes its 
richness to its alternations. But 
there will come a time, and times 
again, to every earnest and worthy 
soul when one's very sense of the 
fullness of life will place the doc- 
trine of immortality far beyond the 
need of any other demonstration. 
All the poets have understood this: 

O gift of God! O perfect day: 
Whereon shall no man work, but play; 
Whereon it is enough for me, 
Not to be doing, but to be! 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 65 

Through every fiber of my brain, 
Through every nerve, through every vein, 
I feel the electric thrill, the touch 
Of life, that seems almost too much. 

So sang our beloved Longfellow in 
the song he was pleased to call "A 
Day of Sunshine." And sunshine 
is one of the cheapest, and at the 
same time most abundant, blessings 
that God has bestowed upon us. 
Yes, the sunshine of life is one of 
the foretastes of immortality! 

Lowell strikes the same chord in 
his wonderful exploitation of a per- 
fect day in June: 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 

Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer 
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay: 

Now the heart is so full that a drop o'erfills it; 

We are happy now because God wills it. 

Nor may we omit Browning from 
this list. He has said some things 



66 THE HOMING INSTINCT 

that are obscure; but this is 
transparent: 

The year's at the spring, 
And day's at the morn; 
Morning's at seven; 
The hillside's dew-pearled; 
The lark's on the wing; 
The snail's on the thorn; 
God's in his heaven — 
All's right with the world! 

All's right with the world, thou 
sweet, strong singer of song; and 
all's right with thee in that world 
where thou art still singing, loudly 
and long! And such a foretaste of 
heaven as thou hast described in 
these thrilling strains is worth all 
the waiting of an expectant year. 

It is said that a certain bishop 
was once asked the way to heaven. 
"Turn to the right/ 5 he replied, 
"and keep straight ahead." It is 
one of the rediscovered truths of 



THE HOMING INSTINCT 67 

modern theology that obedience to 
this advice brings one immediately 
to the celestial gates. "For our con- 
versation (round of life)/' said Paul 
to the Philippians, "is in heaven. 55 



MAR 6 1913 



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